


an exercise in safe dating

by fated_addiction



Category: K-pop, Mamamoo, Real Person Fiction, 우리 결혼했어요 | We Got Married
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-14 18:37:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8024698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fated_addiction/pseuds/fated_addiction
Summary: A couple months after everything ends, she sits down to watch her final We Got Married episode. Solar will be the first to tell you too - she is so bad at this.





	an exercise in safe dating

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not afraid to say it. I watch _We Got Married_ every Saturday. I don't usually intend to, but these two are like _gold_ and whatever they give me feelings!
> 
> Also inspired by Mamamoo's [comeback teaser image.](http://www.soompi.com/2016/09/11/mamamoo-teases-rocking-transformation-new-digital-single/)

-

 

 

 

A couple months after everything ends, she sits down to watch her final _We Got Married_ episode.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Moonbyul asks awkwardly. Her eyes dart over to Wheein. They share a look; Wheein can’t hide her concern.

“You guys are, like, the _worst_.” Hyejin breaks in, shoving a bowl of popcorn into her hands. “Sit on the couch, eonni,” she orders, then kicks both Moonbyul and Wheein to sit together on the floor. “Chin up! Let’s rip that band aid off. You’re not a baby.”

Solar flashes a grin. “I’m fine, you know. I figured I’d watch this since they’ll probably ask me at the interview – I’m being proactive!”

She manages to sit next to Hyejin, who steals the popcorn back and throws a handful into Wheein’s face. Solar laughs a little, ignoring the dubious look that Moonbyul gives her. She doesn’t have to say it; her voice is in her head: _you’re a terrible liar, yongsunie!_ because somewhere in there lies the truth and that is something she’s so not ready to come face to face with just yet.

Moonbyul pokes her knee, mouth full of popcorn. “Ready?”

“I don’t know,” she says, doesn’t recognize her own voice, and ends up watching as Hyejin speeds through some commercials to get through to the show. Her throat starts to burn and she reaches for popcorn to distract herself.

It’s the truth.

A second confession – Solar has never liked watching the end of movies.

 

 

 

 

 

What they say: _We Got Married_ is a harmless forum for you guys to explore your feelings and date normally!

What they _don’t_ say: _We Got Married_ , although scripted to a degree, unravels as a forum where you suddenly come face to face with the reality that you do want to share your life with someone else, that this path you’ve chosen is a really lonely one, and even though you’ve recognized this all along, it becomes abundantly clear when there are no more cameras and the text messages become fewer and fewer.

“I miss him,” Solar says to Moonbyul and it makes her mouth dry. They sit in the salon together. Solar’s hair is wet and cuffed against her chin, her bangs awkwardly sticking to her forehead. She nearly groans and tries to keep her words light. “And I don’t know how I feel about my hair.”

Moonbyul pats her hand. “You look fine.”

“Is that what you tell Wheein-ah?” she shoots back, smirking when Moonbyul flusters.

“You’re not cute.” Moonbyul shakes her head, pulling at a few strands of green hair. Their photo shoot is an hour behind because of equipment failure. “And it’s normal. You’ve essentially gone through a forced breakup after realizing that the two of you were dating – weirdly. It’s now months later and you’re realizing what you’ve just put yourself through.”

Solar narrows her eyes. “Oh?”

“Think about it,” Moonbyul shrugs. “It’s like a drama – the parents that don’t want you to be together are the producers because they’ve got to move onto the next couple, or whatever.”

Solar stares at her, blinking; it’s not that she’s wrong. Her expression changes and she sighs, pressing her face to her hands. 

“I hate boys,” she mutters.

“Me too,” Moonbyul says dryly. Solar laughs and Moonbyul shoves her phone into her hands. “But they’re not complicated,” she finishes. She’s cryptic. “You should probably shoot him a text – you might be surprised.”

Solar’s fingers wrap around her phone. She stares at Moonbyul. The other girl just blinks and shrugs, standing because her stylist is suddenly ready for her. It leaves Solar alone, all of the sudden, and she sort of stares at her phone, knowing full well that she never planned to delete Eric from her phone. It’s a weird realization, but her fingers are moving over the screen and she only hesitates, just slightly, before typing out the words as she says them out loud in her head.

_let’s have coffee_

Her heart is in her throat.

 

 

 

 

 

There is a reply before she goes home. Hyejin turns off the lights in the back and her phone screen wavers brightly.

 _End of the week – text me the info_ , he says.

Like it’s a date.

 

 

 

 

 

“Wear your prettiest dress,” Wheein says, from her bed, completely unaware of the soft look that Moonbyul sends her from the other side of the room. Wheein throws a dress a Solar’s head. “It’s fall-ish,” she says seriously, “so you can get away with white and maybe a cozy sweater since it’s coffee.”

Solar sighs heavily. And almost says something like _this is my job_ because she’s the oldest and somewhere, before all of this, was okay with doing this by herself and marrying them all off anyway.

But she obeys, is ushered off into a car with their manager, nervously flickering through her phone and some of her messages. She texted him earlier in the week, then again today, picking a random coffee shop where it’s quiet and pretty, just in case he cancels, she can have something to do. This is what she’s been telling herself, of course. She still attempts to play one of those stupid puzzle games too, but the car starts to slow down and instinctively, her stomach knots into her nerves because _oh god we’re close_ and she has no idea what she’s going to say.

“You’ll call me?” Her manager says.

Solar forces a smile. “Of course, oppa.” She slides out of the car and gives him a little wave. “Don’t worry too much –” she winks, grinning a little, “I’ll behave.”

He mock sighs, but waves her off, only hovering until she gets to the front of the coffee ship. He’s been with them the longest, of course.

It’s a cute coffee shop though. It lives on a side street, surrounded by an array of plants, large and small, living in a collective mix of colored pots and cups. There’s a couple sitting outside; it’s chilly and she watches, biting lip, as the woman leans in, dropping her head against her boyfriend’s shoulder as he smiles. 

This is going to make her crazy, she thinks. She forces herself to walk inside, letting herself be swallowed by her sweater. She orders her coffee first. Then stops, awkwardly forcing herself to order his coffee too; it’s a habit that won’t die.

“Can you make it later though?” she asks shyly. She checks her watch and smiles awkwardly at the barista. “I’m a little early.”

The barista laughs and promises. She gives him an autograph too, if only to occupy her mind with something. Her nerves are starting to get heavier and she tasks herself with finding a table, picking one close to the window.

It’s only been a couple months, she tells herself. And she’s still kind of a mess.

 

 

 

 

“Let’s have dinner,” he tells her, quietly, after they wrap up filming.

Her eyes are still rimmed with tears and she sort of shrugs, agreeing to dinner. “Sure,” she manages. Then Solar laughs. “Let me fix my face.”

Eric smiles softly, shaking his head. He opens his mouth, but closes it quickly. Instead, he chooses to awkwardly pat her shoulder. As if they’ve gone back to the beginning; the cameras are off and done and there’s nothing else to do, it seems. But dinner, she thinks. They can have a last dinner.

She turns to walk away. There is a bathroom nearby, in the restaurant that they pick for their final shooting. The restaurant is a little dark. The crew is already outside, separating their cameras and equipment into vans; she and Eric are really alone, save for a few of the restaurant staff.

Two arms wrap around her wrist as she reaches the bathroom door.

“What –”

“Stop,” he murmurs, and her eyes are wide. She faces the door, shifting to turn around, but he holds her firmly to his chest. “Just listen for a second.”

Solar tries humor. It’s a little watery. “I can’t go anywhere.”

“I’m sorry,” Eric says and there’s a little laugh, just as his arms start to relax against her waist. His mouth brushes over her ear and she flushes, wide-eyed. “This whole experience was just… surreal. I don’t really know how else to put it. I felt like I was dating you, but I felt like I was doing a terrible job of dating you – all the things I really wanted to do with you were put to the back because of things like budget and time and _schedules_. It was as if I was competing against something I was never going to beat…”

Solar’s heart is in her throat. Her eyes blur and she’s crying again without allowing herself to hold that back. No one’s going to see you, she keeps telling herself. She still shudders and her back flattens against his chest.

“I wish this could be different,” he tells her.

Solar shakes her head. “I’m not going anywhere,” she mumbles. The words seem foreign to her. “I’m not going to delete your number. We’ll still see each other.”

“For a little while.” He’s always told her; he’s pragmatic. He dreams big, but wisely – it’s never failed him. His words still make her heart sink and it’s a little like a love song, there, always there, but out of reach.

She turns then, a little braver, maybe a lot braver – there are no cameras around as it is. She doesn’t move his hands; they stay tightly around her waist, his palms sinking into the fabric of her dress. But her hands rise and cup his face, her thumb brushing against his nose, then his mouth as she tries and swallows.

They won’t make it to dinner, she realizes. So she says it – what she should have said before, maybe even front of the cameras, maybe not.

“It’ll work if you want it to work.”

Her smile only waivers slightly.

Then it’s over.

 

 

 

 

 

Her coffee is cold and he is thirty minutes late.

“Is he coming?” The barista has brought her a free pastry, nervously passing her a fork. Solar can almost see the headline: _Mamamoo leader stood up?_ She forces herself to shake her head, feeling ridiculous. She spends way too much time watching dramas with Wheein, she thinks.

She still smiles at the barista. “He’ll be here,” she says confidently. Her voice only waivers slightly; her phone brightens and she gets a barrage of texts from the girls, ignoring every single one.

But true to form, the café door opens and Eric practically runs in, out of breath and with wide eyes. He spots her immediately and then smiles brightly – brighter than she remembers him smiling. The barista excuses herself to make his coffee and Solar stands to greet Eric warmly.

“Hi –”

Eric ignores the formalities and comes straight to her, wrapping his arms around her and squeezing tightly.

“I’m so sorry,” he says. “There was traffic and stuff and my meeting for my next project took too long and – oh my god, _your hair_.” His reaction is genuine confusion. He doesn’t hide. “It’s – your hair!”

“It’s my hair,” she replies, dry.

Eric still studies her. “I like it.”

Solar’s face warms. Her eyes are wide and her heart is panicking against her chest as he draws back, fingering the short ends of her hair.

“Comeback,” she squeaks. She tries to recover, swallowing when his fingers hit her chin. He hasn’t let go of her. “I don’t know how I feel about it.” She makes an awkward joke, laughing nervously. “I keep reaching for hair that’s not there.”

Eric laughs. “It’s very pretty.” His gaze is serious. He thumbs back her bangs. “It’s strange not to see you with long hair – but I like it,” he tells her again. He grins a little too. “It makes you look a lot taller than you are.”

Solar laughs like she’s been holding it in all this time, bursting into a bright smile as she hits him and they manage to sit down, at the table, but next to each other oddly enough. The barista brings him a coffee and Solar spoons some of the pastry, jerking it in front of Eric’s mouth so that he eats.

“You’ve been busy,” is all she says.

He obeys and takes a bite. “So have you,” he says seriously, and it’s like they’re confessing to monitoring each other. It’s more sensible for Eric though with the amount of shows he MCs. “Are you resting enough? It’s about to get busier again. For you,” he adds.

She snorts. “You sound like my mother.”

“I worry,” he shrugs and feeds her a piece of the pastry. He pauses and sighs. “I don’t get to see you as often,” he murmurs.

It’s not the greatest _ah-ha!_ moment she’s had; it hits her slowly, maybe even painfully, her mouth folding into seriousness. She puts the spoon down, pushing her coffee away from herself on the table. When she looks at him, she just knows: _I am going to do something stupid_ , she thinks. No rhyme. No reason. It just overwhelms, a rush of feelings that comeback to stand between them.

So she asks: “Do you want to?”

Eric blinks. Then he blinks again. The small, rational part of herself waits for him to laugh because that’s how she knows him again – smiling appropriately, seriousness at the right time, but not a complete façade. She picks up and dusts off her memory of his tells: that nervous twitch of his mouth, how he looks at her, straight at her, but not really because his fingers are flexing and his body shifts to face her.

“Can we?”

Her eyes widen.

“Do this,” he adds, motioning with his hand between them. “It won’t be quiet,” he murmurs. “It’s going to be really hard too.”

Solar’s nerves start to grow. She almost reaches for her coffee, but he grabs her hand and pulls it to him. Their linked fingers drop to rest against his knee.

“Is it always?” she asks, looking down. “Sometimes I read stories about people in the industry dating and get, like, ridiculously discouraged because of how frustrating it might be and how hard they have to work for those moments – moments, by the way, that I get paid to sing about like I’ve had them.”

He laughs a little. “It’s the worst part,” he agrees.

Solar smiles fondly, studying their hands. She’s always liked how they’ve looked together. She’s never told him – his large, but not too large, as it comfortably envelopes her fingers and palm, folding them like they should be surrounded by his.

“I feel like I’ve had a crash course in getting to know you.” She meets his gaze. “I like that I know you, but what scares me is that I want to know more of you – all the bad, the frustrating, the weird quirks and the best parts of you. I want to – I – don’t know how to not want to _not_ know you.”

Solar feels clumsy, maybe even more so that she’s ever been in front of anyone. Her girls haven’t really seen this side of her either. The sensation of being exposed like this is equally as terrifying as being thrown together with him the first go around, on a show and in front of a billion people trying to read every single move they make.

“So I don’t care if it’s hard,” she manages. “I don’t care if we hurt each other and then make up. I don’t care if you get mad at me for filming _whatever_ or I get jealous because you’re in a campaign with a pretty girl. All I know is that I want to see you for a date. I want to text you at the end of my night and tell you that I’m going to call you in the morning just hear about your day. I want to go on a date where it’s me and you and hold your hand through a scary movie – even though,” she says firmly, “I _hate_ scary movies. But for you, oppa, I would stomach it.”

This is the confession, months too late. At the wrong time. Probably even at the wrong place. But it’s as if a weight leaves her shoulders and she stares at him, half-waiting for a reply, marveling at her sudden ability to breathe. _I did this_ , she thinks.

He doesn’t say anything. Not at first. He reaches for her again with his free hand, cupping her chin with palm. His eyes search hers and she doesn’t know what he’s looking for, but she doesn’t look away. Doesn’t know how to. Instead, her lips part and she releases a sigh she’s been holding onto for what feels like ages.

Eric kisses her.

His fingers wrap around the nape of her neck, his mouth burning through her lips and into her throat. She’s dizzy and tightens her grip around his hand, her nails pressing into his skin as his mouth opens into a lazy sigh. Her lungs feel like they’re going to explode and her feet press harder into the ground, tipping her chair forward as she sort of sinks in between his legs. It’s irresponsible, but neither of them seems to care.

“Your agency is going to kill me,” he mumbles against her mouth, grinning when she laughs against his lips.

The truth is this: she doesn’t care.

 

 

 

 

 

Their agencies confirm their relationship in the most platonic way.

“- please give a lot of love to both Eric and Solar,” Wheein reads from her laptop, just as Moonbyul returns her phone. “ _We Got Married_ was a positive experience – Look on them favorably as they work and date quietly, blah, blah, _blah_. So boring – I thought they’d at least include shots of you seeing a movie or something exciting.”

Solar rolls her eyes. “Stop it,” she chides lazily, the corners of her mouth turning as she switches her phone back on and plugs it into the charger hanging off the wall. “You’re not even cute,” she says, rolling her eyes when Moonbyul pats Wheein’s head anyway. They both grin at each other.

Ten minutes later, she realizes that Moonbyul and Wheein have changed Eric’s name in her phone to _my kids’ dad_.

Of course, there’s this too.


End file.
